


everything leads me to you

by dustbottle



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon Compliant, Don't copy to another site, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff and Smut, Future Fic, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, POV Adam Parrish, Post-Canon, Reunion Sex, Reunions, Soft Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 03:16:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustbottle/pseuds/dustbottle
Summary: It’s the end of the fall semester, and Adam is finally going home.“Poetry, dreams, desire, everything leads me to you.”– J.W. von Goethe





	everything leads me to you

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings: none. No CDTH spoilers!

It’s the end of the fall semester. Exams are over and done with, and Adam is finally driving home. He takes the interstate most of the way, south, then west; the endless blur of identical chain restaurants and gas stations doesn’t make for a particularly interesting driving experience, so Adam listens to the staticky silence that has coated the inside of the Hondayota since his crappy radio finally gave out, watches the sea of cars swell and crest around him, and tries not to feel too impatient.

After a couple of hours, he exits the interstate and his surroundings gradually change around him, going from concrete and bustling traffic to winding country roads, hemmed in by trees on both sides. Adam listens to the whir of his mostly-useless heater and lets himself think it: a year ago, he wouldn’t have come back here; a year ago, he couldn’t even have considered it. It doesn’t feel like a step backwards anymore, though. It just feels familiar. It feels like coming home.

The semester has been long and gruelling. More than once, as papers and projects and deadlines kept piling up around him, Adam had looked at his planner and wondered how he was supposed to juggle it all. Princeton was nothing like Aglionby; even with one job instead of three like he was used to, it was almost more than he could handle. But even though it was stressful and overwhelming and unthinkingly pretentious, Adam had expected that; he hadn’t expected how much he would love it. College had always been a means to an end to him, another impossible task to be submitted to his will, but it wasn’t just that anymore; he loved it wholeheartedly and unabashedly, loved the atmosphere and the heady sense of accomplishment and the sheer challenge of it all, loved it in a way he’d never loved Aglionby.

Another thing he hadn’t expected: how much he would long to go home. How much he would miss it, not so much this tired dead-end place he had been running from all his life, but _home_ , the people so intrinsically connected to him. At Princeton, Adam had made acquaintances but not friends; he hadn’t quite fit in with his peers, hadn’t quite wanted to. There was something fundamentally strange about him, and he was tired of hiding it; or maybe that was bullshit and he just hadn’t tried hard enough. All he was certain of was that he missed his friends, painful and inescapable like missing a limb; missed Ronan, most of all. Though they talked on the phone as often as they could, this was the longest they’d gone without seeing each other since they met, and it _hurt_.

It’s nearing the end of the day when he crosses the state border into Virginia; dusk is falling around him, turning the asphalt ahead to molten gold, the stretching sky to improbable pink, the silent trees to living dreams. Adam rolls down the windows, breathes in air thick with the promise of rain, and settles in his skin more and more with each breath.

As soon as he passes the town of Singer’s Falls and takes the winding road down to the Barns, the world falls quiet around him. Sloping green fields stretch out endlessly on either side of him, all rolling hills and grassy glens, opulent in their simplicity. It’s been an unseasonably warm day, and steam fog rises from the meadows to meet the low glittering clouds. In the distance, a herd of dream cows looks up curiously at his approach; near a copse of trees, a young buck moves quickly out of sight. Adam smiles and keeps driving, something warm and uncontainable swelling in his chest.

Scattered across the sprawling property are the barns, as lovely as they are mysterious; Adam drives down to the dilapidated shed Ronan uses as a makeshift garage and parks his car to continue on foot. Back on familiar ground, impatience quickening his step, he thinks back on the past few months. He remembers the triumphs and the burning pride, the exhaustion and the sacrifice. He remembers the times he slept fitfully, dreaming of Ronan and waking up alone; he remembers the times it felt like alone was all he was. Here, in this impossible place made of impossible dreams, he looks around and feels, finally, at ease.

When he finds Ronan outside the main barn, his heart skips several quivering beats in a row. Ronan hasn’t noticed him yet; for a dreamy second, Adam just watches him, struck dumb with belonging. The last rays of the setting sun paint Ronan in golden hues, all his sharp edges softened by the slanting light. He looks good. He looks so _good_.

Adam breathes out, takes a faltering step closer; Ronan turns around at the sound and smiles like he can’t help himself, his whole face opening up like a flower to the sun. Dropping the piece of rope he was holding like he already forgot all about it, he comes up to meet him.

“Took you long enough, Parrish,” Ronan says, going for casual but missing the mark by a mile; his words are careful and smoky soft, bent around the edges of his smile.

“Impatient much?” Adam tries to say, but Ronan is already crowding him, already in his space, and it’s a lot and it’s just right and it’s suddenly hard to breathe around the want blocking up his throat. When Ronan kisses him hello, light and sweet like the very first time, it feels so familiar he could cry.

The kiss breaks, and they linger in each other’s space. Adam brushes his thumb over Ronan’s sharp cheekbone, watches the way his lashes flutter at the touch, mesmerized and hopelessly charmed. Ronan meets his eyes, and Adam can’t look away from the boundless yearning in his gaze.

“Where’s Opal?” Adam murmurs, close and wanting to be closer; his need is like a living thing under his skin, warm and wild and running free. He notices the way Ronan studies him, like he can’t quite believe he came back, like he’s committing him to memory; he wants to reassure them both that he is exactly where he needs to be. Ronan exhales, shaky and real, and Adam never wants to let him go.

“Staying with the witches,” Ronan says, answer to a question Adam has already forgotten. Nodding vaguely, he lets himself get a little lost in the insistent clamour of his thundering pulse. Similarly distracted, Ronan’s eyes keep dropping to his lips, then back up, a circuit of heady temptation; when Adam finally leans in, Ronan meets him halfway.

It’s the kind of kiss that swallows him whole, ceaseless and unafraid. Ronan smells of woodsmoke and leather and fresh air, and Adam breathes him in like it’s the most important thing he’ll ever do. He shifts to deepen the kiss, licking into Ronan’s mouth with something close to hunger, closer to greed; Ronan makes a desperate sound in the back of his throat, and Adam barely has time to register the thud in his stomach before he is responding, acutely burning up.

It’s too easy to drown in this, in each other, to yield all control to this thrumming baseline of desire. Ronan’s lips stray from his mouth to the edge of his jaw to the sensitive spot on his neck with lethal intent, and Adam moans in spite of himself. He can feel himself going weak-kneed, his thoughts cloudy and unfocused; Ronan comes back up to kiss him again, and Adam indulges, shameless, helpless to stop himself. He catches Ronan’s bottom lip between his teeth and pulls, relishing in his groan.

“Inside,” Adam says into Ronan’s mouth, unwilling to break away for even a second; through some miracle, Ronan understands, grabbing his hand and dragging him inside. If Adam thought he would get any respite, though, he is mistaken. As soon as the door closes, Ronan pushes him against it and drops to his knees, mouthing at him eagerly through his jeans, hot breath dampening the fabric. Sharp bolts of arousal shoot down his spine like forks of lightning; Adam exhales unsteadily and swallows around nothing, struggling not to come from the sight alone.

Ronan looks up at him and grins, his eyes huge and dark; he looks beautiful like this, wild and nearly overwhelmed with the force of his want. Craving all the contact he can get, Adam impulsively reaches out to trace the familiar shape of Ronan’s shaved head, the striking lines of his lovely face; Ronan takes his hand and brings it to his mouth, closing his eyes as he slowly and carefully kisses the tip of each unremarkable finger. Adam tries in vain to calm his riotous heart, completely undone by Ronan’s impossible tenderness in the middle of this wildfire of need. He is so hard it hurts, but he knows he could stay here forever, watching him.

“Ronan,” he says, then stops, dangerously unsteady until Ronan blinks open his eyes. “I missed you,” Adam tells him, and it’s the truth, unadorned and painfully simple. Ronan’s entire face softens in response.

“I fucking missed you, too,” Ronan says, on his knees and reaching to palm him through the front of his jeans, and just like that, the mood shifts again. “Adam, _fuck_ , can I– let me–” Ronan pants, and the edge of frantic desperation in his voice electrifies Adam to the core. He can only nod and nod and nod and try to control his breathing, helpless in the onslaught.

When Ronan finally leans in to nose at his aching cock, Adam gasps and lets his head thud back against the door like his strings have been cut. Ronan draws it out, teasingly sucking a string of searing bruises into the sensitive skin at the crease of Adam’s thigh; Adam swears under his breath, forcing himself to stay still even though all he wants to do is move, restless and ablaze.

Ronan licks a broad stripe along the underside of his cock, and Adam sees stars; when he shifts to take him in his mouth, all swirling richness and lush heat, he chokes and chokes on a groan. Adam wraps a trembling hand around the back of Ronan’s head, not trying to control him but grounding himself, grounding them both. Ronan moans at the touch, low and rough and drawn-out, and the vibrations around his cock make sparks dance deliciously up Adam’s spine. He has never liked being at anyone’s mercy, but this might be the one magnificent exception.

He gets close embarrassingly fast. Driven beyond speech, beyond breath, he scratches his fingers across Ronan’s buzzed scalp in wordless warning; Ronan just swirls his tongue and stubbornly takes him deeper, swallowing around him. Adam looks down and Ronan meets his eyes, pupils blown wide and trusting as he coaxes him to the edge. Ronan has always loved blowing him, has always found a kind of raw joy in its breathless surrender; knowing it, Adam reaches out to thumb gently at the corner of Ronan’s eye, drops lower to trace his cock where it disappears in Ronan’s willing mouth. Ronan groans, deep and guttural like the sound is being torn from him, and Adam shivers and shivers and shivers with it.

There’s no way he’s going to last; he is teetering on the edge, shaky and desperate, hanging on by the thinnest of threads. Heart pounding and blood thundering through his veins, he reaches out for Ronan’s hand, a compass finding north; Ronan squeezes back in silent affirmation, wholly steadfast even with his irreverent mouth wrapped around his cock. Somehow, that’s what does it; Adam comes with a broken sob, swept up in a roaring torrent of ever-present need, everything whiting out before rushing back in twice as loud, twice as rich, twice as utterly overwhelming, and he is lost and found at the same time.

Ronan works him through it before pulling back and wiping his mouth, breathing ragged and colour high in his cheeks, and if Adam hadn’t just come, that would have done it. “Welcome home, Parrish,” Ronan says as he gets to his feet, somewhere between unbearably smug and unbearably genuine, and Adam can’t help himself; he leans in to kiss him again. Cradling Ronan’s sharp-angled face in his unworthy hands, Adam makes a home for himself in his mouth; Ronan whimpers like he’s breaking apart, like he’s choking on it, and opens to him.

They get lost in it for a while, as hungry for each other as they’ve always been; Adam shoves his leg up so Ronan can thrust against it, feels more than hears the way his breath hitches with want. Adam kisses him again and again, recklessly chases his own taste, luxuriates in the way Ronan melts for him. There is something fragile about this, something precious; Adam leans into the rapidly building tension with conviction singing through his veins, savouring every sound from Ronan’s irresistible mouth until finally Ronan breaks away, black-eyed and beautiful in his urgency. “Bed,” he rasps, and his voice is hoarse enough to set fire to Adam’s blood.

Once they’ve made their stumbling way to the bed and out of their clothes, Ronan lets himself fall, pulling Adam down with him. Their eyes meet, and Adam shivers under Ronan’s heated gaze. He leans in again, ghosting a kiss over Ronan’s wanting mouth before dropping lower, lower, lower, lingering on the edge of his jaw, the stubbly softness of his cheek, the hollow of his throat, tasting his jackhammer pulse on his tongue.

He shifts on the bed, feeling Ronan’s hardness press insistently against his thigh; Ronan whines into his mouth at the touch, exquisitely impatient. Adam can’t help teasing him, withholding pressure where he wants it most while lavishing attention everywhere else, ruthlessly meticulous like he is with everything else. Ronan takes it beautifully, always so responsive, his yearning an almost physical thing between them, but when Adam starts to move lower, Ronan stops him before he can get far. He pulls Adam back up for a messy kiss, shaking his head and gasping into his mouth, “No, just your… just your hands, _fuck_ ,” and heat flushes all the way down Adam’s spine, startling and immediate.

Ronan draws him into another searing kiss, more tongue and teeth than anything else, shameless and dizzyingly hot. Adam draws back a little, looking him in the eye as he messily licks his own palm, watching him gasp a shuttered breath. Then he finally wraps his hand around Ronan’s straining cock, its velvety weight warm and familiar, and Ronan groans and groans and doesn’t stop, his choked-off curses more like music than anything else. And Adam loves him, loves him deliriously, loves him completely, and knows it, and it’s a revelation every day.

It doesn’t take Ronan long to get close. Adam strokes him evenly once, again, and Ronan closes his eyes; Adam thumbs the slit, smears the wetness there, and Ronan lets out a trembling sigh and buries his face in Adam’s neck. He is heartbreakingly lovely like this, flushed warm and bright with affectionate need, and suddenly Adam aches for him in a way he can’t quite understand. He has always known himself to be greedy, has always wanted more than the world was willing to give; that’s the truth. Ronan has always wanted to give him everything; that, too is the truth, and Adam grasps for it with both hands.

“Ronan,” he says, unsteady like he’s shaking apart, and Ronan understands. He meets his eyes with so much reckless trust it leaves him breathless, and Adam shudders and shudders with the steady weight of his gaze; Adam knows about power, has felt the raw strength of Cabeswater rushing through his veins, but it’s nothing compared to the thrill of holding Ronan’s trust.

Ronan looks at him like he’s grounding himself, like he’s pleading for something to hold onto, and Adam reaches out to him with everything he has. Through the dull roar of arousal, his heart beating madly out of control, Adam twists his wrist in the way Ronan likes, slow and a little bit wicked; with his other hand, he carefully entwines their fingers. He finds himself holding his breath, watching Ronan as he works him closer and closer to the edge; when he twists his wrist again, thumb grazing the head, Ronan arches up and comes with a stuttering groan, and everything else falls away. Adam watches his orgasm roll through him like a tidal wave, cresting and breaking, and it’s even more beautiful than he remembered.

They come down together, messy and young and brazenly alive. Adam kisses him again and Ronan reciprocates immediately, loose-limbed and clumsy with pleasure. He sighs into the kiss, intoxicating, brings a calloused hand up to cup Adam’s cheek, and Adam isn’t religious but he finds all the faith he needs in Ronan’s sharp eyes and unwavering trust. It’s all too tempting to get swept up in the easy slide of Ronan’s tongue between shuttered breaths, and Adam allows himself to drift. After a while, Ronan curls into his body and hums contentedly, pressing a kiss to the underside of his jaw before resting his head in the curve of his neck, and Adam holds him tight and doesn’t let go.

He’s not sure how much time passes. He just knows that he would be perfectly happy to lie here forever, breathing in the quiet air, evening sun slanting in through the large window. He has been distantly aware of himself, hard again and buzzing with it, but it’s a low-banked thing, secondary to the nebulous peace pervading the room. That is, until Ronan exhales and shifts against him, full-body and purposeful, and suddenly it’s all he can think about.

Ronan is clearly still oversensitive almost to the point of pain, but he sets a breathless, disjointed rhythm, heavy and unrelenting. He’s making desperate keening sounds in the back of his throat, and Adam can’t resist him like this, or ever, so he doesn’t. “Come on,” Ronan gasps, straining up to kiss him again, urging him on, “Adam, come _on_ , I-” he breaks off on a ragged moan, swearing long and low and sweet, his cock already starting to fill out again against Adam’s leg, and Adam feels feverish and wrecked with want.

“Ronan,” he says, hungry and hot and halfway to overwhelmed; he waits until Ronan blinks open his eyes before moving impossibly closer. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you,” he says, and it sounds like a promise, honest and unwieldy; it tastes like a vow.

Ronan holds his gaze for a drawn-out second before smiling, bright and welcome like the sun after a storm. He turns away to rummage through the drawer of the bedside table, leaning back up to steal another kiss as he presses the bottle into Adam’s shaking hands. “I haven’t waited this long for you not to fuck me,” he says, smiling still and fierce with it, and it could have sounded filthy but somehow it just sounds true, and Adam is nodding before he’s even registered the words.

Adam marvels at the way the mood has shifted back from perfect calm to this strange, liquid kind of urgency. He kisses his way languidly down the pale column of Ronan’s throat, licking the twisting tendrils of his tattoo, then moves lower, drunk on the wide expanse of available skin. He maps a meandering path across Ronan’s heaving body, sucking reverent bruises into warm skin, feeling the muscles quiver and twitch under his lips. He lingers despite himself, unable to think over the roaring of blood in his ears, hopelessly caught up in the inferno. It isn’t long before Ronan is squirming, red all the way down his chest and cursing under his breath, and Adam loves him like this, loves him loud and open and unafraid, loves him like devotion turned to flesh.

When Adam opens the bottle of lube and slicks his fingers, Ronan parts his legs and groans, heartfelt and shockingly obscene. Adam bends down to drop a trail of butterfly kisses across his lower ribs, the sharp jut of his hip, the swell of his thigh, aiming to distract as he slips the first finger inside. Ronan is tight as he always is, and he sucks in a hitching breath at the intrusion before consciously relaxing into it, reckless and hopeful like a blessing. Adam rewards him by rubbing the sensitive skin of his perineum and carefully adding another finger, committing to memory the lithe lines of his body as he drives him steadily out of his mind.

After a while, Ronan whines with impatience and bears down around him, and Adam swallows hard against the arousal surging through his veins. He leans down to press an open-mouthed kiss to Ronan’s cock, running his tongue along the vein and smiling as Ronan jerks, everything about him eager and trusting and free. Experimentally, Adam crooks his fingers, and Ronan arches his back and lets out a gravelly moan; when Adam presses deeper, searching, Ronan groans and starts talking, almost mindlessly except for what he’s saying. “I keep dreaming about you,” he pants, hips twitching in tiny, aborted movements, “can’t believe you’re really here,” and finally, low and almost broken, “Please, _Adam_ ,” and that’s it, that’s all the permission he needs, that’s all the patience he can muster up.

When he lines himself up and starts pushing inside, Ronan releases a long breath and goes boneless beneath him. Adam simply has to lean down to kiss his gasping mouth, his fluttering eyelids, has to linger on the proud lines of his cheekbone, his nose, his stubborn brow. “I’m real, Ronan,” he says, voice rough, accent dragging out the words, “I’m here.” He punctuates his words with a rock of his hips into clenching heat, measured and deliberate, and Ronan’s mouth drops open, red and wet like he wants something in it; Adam brings up a hand and Ronan kisses his knuckles, sucking his fingers inside and moaning around them, and Adam has eyes only for him.

He still can’t believe he gets to have this sometimes; it’s a privilege to be wanted like this, to be wanted by this impossible dreamer of impossible dreams, and Adam knows it better than he knows himself. He leans down to kiss Ronan again, sloppy and uncoordinated, more an exchange of breath than anything else, and revels in the way Ronan shudders all over and opens to him, achingly sweet. Though Ronan can be abrasive, though Adam can be distant and cold, they aren’t here; here, in their bed, there is only this, only them, safe and together and real. Adam knows what love looks like on Ronan now, knows what it feels like on himself; he knows now, he _knows_ , and it is more than enough.

Bottoming out is damnation and salvation wrapped into one, perfect and mind-numbingly intense. With effort, Adam holds still until Ronan sighs and hitches his hips, scrambling his frantic thoughts. The first rock inside is torture made divine, a hymn inside a hymn; Ronan closes his eyes against it, long lashes dark smudges against his cheeks, and Adam wants to hold him in his calloused, undeserving hands and never let him go.

The rhythm he sets is syrupy sweet, too slow to offer any kind of relief, endlessly unhurried like midsummer dusk. Adam kisses the side of Ronan’s neck, scrapes his teeth across his collarbone, nips the lethal edge of his tattoo, and Ronan arches into it; he grazes a nipple, wickedly innocent, and thrills when Ronan chokes on a moan. Adam forces himself to slow down, drawing it out almost past the point where it’s bearable, and it still isn’t enough. Ronan smells of trust and sweat and mist and moss and _boy_ , and Adam wonders wildly how he can be this close and still need Ronan closer; he needs him behind his teeth, inside his veins, under his skin, forever, forever, forever.

“ _Fu-u-uck_ ,” Ronan sounds dazed, torn apart and almost drunk, but his gaze is clear when he meets Adam’s eyes; Adam watches as Ronan gently kisses the inside of his wrist, lingering on his pulse point as he blinks through helpless tears, overflowing with the fullness of feeling this. He’s bleeding raw emotion all over the place, brave in this like he is in everything else, and Adam feels the sting of it in his own eyes too. Being loved by Ronan is like standing at the heart of a storm, all roar and violence that never touch him, and after everything, after Glendower and Cabeswater and loss and extraordinary life, Adam no longer wants to stifle himself. When he kisses him again, breathless, endless, deliberate, he sighs into it with his tremulous, valiant heart pounding in his ears.

Ronan kisses him back like he always does, sure and heavy with want, clearly close to falling apart, and suddenly Adam can’t possibly stand the devouring slowness a moment longer. He pulls nearly all the way out before plunging back in, fire in his blood, and Ronan’s voice cracks right down the middle, hoarse and relieved. When Adam finally starts fucking him in earnest, Ronan rolls with him, recklessly pliant, lips parted on a soundless moan, chest rising and falling with heaving breaths; when Adam finds his prostate, the sudden sting of blunt fingernails digging into his back sends electricity rushing down his spine.

Ronan is always gorgeous, but like this, he’s a vision; he’s gasping and gasping for breath as he writhes beneath Adam, head thrown back in glorious agony, the line of his swallowing throat stark and lovely. His cock is fully hard again and leaking onto his stomach, and he jerks and cries out when Adam curls a trembling hand around him. The fierce lines of Ronan’s tattoo seem to come alive with strain as he bucks up reflexively into Adam’s hand, and Adam allows himself to be pulled in, needing it more than air, more than life, blood singing true and rapturous in his veins; miraculously, impossibly, Adam is home, home, home, and he finds both safety and freedom in the cradle of Ronan’s hips.

Adam is relentless as he brings Ronan back up to the precipice, stroking and squeezing his straining cock and unerringly hitting his prostate with every thrust. Ronan responds to him beautifully, all endless longing and unassuming faith, and Adam wants to give him everything, everything; he knows intimately the ancient living power of the ley line, the surging joy of seeing Cabeswater restored, but nothing is quite as overwhelming as holding Ronan so completely in his reclaimed hands.

In the end, it’s Ronan who comes first; he tumbles into it with a shaky moan, tugging Adam close and biting a fierce kiss into the corner of his jaw, demanding and pleased. He tightens around Adam as he rides it out, eyes wide and blue and locked onto his, a challenge and a vow, and Adam is following him over the edge before he has a chance to take a breath. He feels lit up with the force of it, blissfully and desperately and frightfully alive; reeling and broken apart, he soars over an endless expanse of sun-lit clouds, stars being born again and again behind his sex-blind eyes.

After, they lie in the drowsy stillness together, Adam tracing Ronan’s tattoo across the sharp wings of his shoulder blades, quietly indulgent. Ronan hums happily at his touch, turning his head to look at him from where he’s lying on his chest; the setting sun lovingly bathes him in gold, highlighting his barely-there freckles, and Adam is so in love with him it _hurts_ , sometimes.

Returning Ronan’s gaze, Adam drops a kiss to the top of his head, stupidly fond and satisfied to the tips of his toes. When Ronan smiles, Adam can’t resist teasing him a little, smirking back at him, slow and lazy and smug. “Thanks for slobbering all over my hand just now, Lynch,” he drawls, playing at nonchalance but tightening his arm around Ronan’s waist at the same time, uncaring of his honey-sweet accent peeking out between the words.

Ronan scoffs, but is betrayed by the tips of his ears turning pink. “Shut up, shithead,” he shoots back, absolutely no bite to the words, and the soft flush travelling all the way down his chest sends helpless spasms of joy down Adam’s spine. Of course, because Ronan is pathologically incapable of letting Adam have the last word, he adds, “you loved it,” low and sure, and Adam is promptly breathless with the pleasure of being so utterly known.

“Yeah, I did, it was hot,” Adam says, going for coolly unapologetic and overshooting by a mile, far too earnest as he meets Ronan’s clear-eyed gaze. “I love you,” he adds, an afterthought and an overarching truth; he’s cut off midway by an unstoppable yawn, the strain of the day and the never-ending semester finally catching up with him, but he doesn’t miss the way Ronan’s face softens even as he rolls his eyes.

“I love you too, Parrish. Now go the fuck to sleep,” Ronan says, and drapes a reassuring arm across Adam’s chest. Slowly, steadily, Adam exhales. Through the open window, he can see the distant mountain range, purpling and imposing in the evening light; the cool air smells of the earth after rain; the trees are alive with birdsong both real and dreamt. If peace were a place, Adam quietly thinks it would be here.

The pull of sleep is almost irresistible at this point, weighing down his weary limbs, and still Adam holds on; utterly content in his blurry exhaustion, he hugs Ronan close and lets his heavy eyes drift shut, lets his lips brush Ronan’s overwarm skin, aiming and probably mostly missing his intended goal. The last thing he hears before he drops into luxurious sleep is Ronan’s true laugh, gentle and fierce.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, I really hope you enjoyed! Kudos and comments are always appreciated! You can also find me on [tumblr](http://www.dustbottle.tumblr.com), come and say hi!
> 
> Happy Pride Month, y’all!
> 
> (Also, there are no condoms used in this story. Adam and Ronan are in a committed, exclusive relationship and are both 100% clean. No such guarantees in real life, though. Be safe, be smart - use a condom!)


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